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Lft/v\Xv>uw, OL/a^vo-cAJxXld-t-^ Iliiir V*"^ 



THE 



BRYANT FESTIVAL 



AT 




^^tl)c Ccntttrgr 



November 5, M.DCCC.LXIV. 






New York : 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 

443 & 445 Broadway, 
m.dccc.lxv. 






Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by 
THE CENTURY ASSOCIATION, 

In the Clerk's Office of the Diftrid Court of the United States for the Southern Diftrift 

of New York. 



7 



x^ 




€l)t Brgmtt JTeatioaL 




:HE CENTURY," of which Mr. Bryant was 
one of the original founders and truftees, 
and remains an affiduous member, by a 
spontaneous movement resolved to seize the occafion of his 
entrance into his seventieth year, to mark their good will to 
their beloved associate and their pride in his fame. The 
third of November was the day of his birth ; the evening- 
of the fifth was seleded for their feftival. Invitations to be 
present were sent to many of his friends in various parts of 
the country ; and, as was expeded, met with the mod cor- 
dial responses and acceptance. Some idea of the defign got 
abroad, and notwithftanding the excitement of an impending 
national eleftion, there were abundant evidences that it 
touched the sympathy of the great public. 



As the company at the appointed time entered the house 
of the Century, they found the hall decorated with long and 
graceful lines of feftoons of frelli flowers and evergreen. 
The gallery, which was brilliantly and skillfully lighted, was 
hung round with five-and-twenty new pidures, and a work 
in sculpture, all by members of the Century. These were 
" 'The Mischief Maker" by Leutze ; a Marine Fiew^ a Sea- 
Coaft^ and a Sketch from Nature, by Ken sett; "T/^^ Seventh 
Regiment in Camp" and a Scene on the Coaft of Maine, by 
GiFFORD ; a Landscape, by Cropsey ; " Lonely" by Hen- 
NESSY ; a portrait, by Le Clear ; Nahant Coajt, and a Sketch 
fro?n Nature, by Haseltine ; " Dogs and Rat," by Hays ; 
" Venice" by Huntington ; " Sunny Hours," by Lang ; " Read- 
ing tlie News," and "^ Flower-girl," by Rossiter; ''Evening," 
by Colman; ''By the Sea," by Benson ; "Study of a Horse," hy 
Dana; "Lady of Seville," by Hall; a portrait, by Stone; a 
portrait, "The Carrier Figeon," "The Companions," and "In the 
floods," by Hicks ; and the model of a horse, by Brown. 

Precisely at nine o'clock, the proceffion, consifting of Mr. 
Bryant, the guefts of the Century, and its officers, moved 
into the large saloon, to the mufic of a band in the balcony. 
The room was already filled by about four hundred persons, 
members of the Century, and ladies. The decorations were 
exclufively of natural flowers, which had been sent by mem- 



bers of the Association in profufion, as if the season had 
been the laft of spring rather than early winter. Behind the 
raised platform on which Mr. Bryant and the Preiident took 
their seats, was a lyre, composed entirely of frefli violets, 
amaranths, and immortelles, and in its ftrings the initials of 
the poet's name were written in flowers. Above the lyre 
was his marble buft, crowned with laurel. Upon the walls 
were hung various passages from his poems, inscribed on 
tablets in letters of gold. Among others equally appropriate 
were these : 

In such a bright, late quiet would that I 

Might wear out life like thee, 'mid bowers and brooks, 
And dearer yet, the sunftiine of kind looks. 

And mufic of kind voices ever nigh. 



For thou haft taught us with delighted eye. 
To gaze upon the mountains — to behold 

With deep affe6lion the pure, ample fky. 
And clouds along its blue abysses rolled — 

To love the song of waters, and to hear 

The melody of winds with charmed ear. 



His love of truth, too warm, too ftrong 
For Hope or Fear to chain or chill. 

His hate of Tyranny and wrong. 
Burn in the breafts he kindled, ftill. 



Let the mimic canvas fhow 
His calm, benevolent features ; let the light 
Stream o'er his deeds of love, that (hunned the fight 

Of all but Heaven ; and in the book of fame 
The glorious record of his virtues write. 
And hold it up to men, and bid them claim 
A palm like his, and catch from him the hallowed flame. 

No sooner had the mufic ceased, than the Prefident rose, 
and aniidlt every evidence of the unanimous adhefion of the 
audience, spoke as follows : 

William Cullen Bryant : 

The Century has set apart this evening to Ihow you honor. 
All its members, the old and the young, crowd around you like 
brothers round a brother — like children round a father. Our 
wives and daughters have come with us, that they, too, may join 
in the pleasant office of bearing witness to your worth. The 
artists of our association, whose labors you have ever been ready 
to cheer, whose merits you have loved to proclaim, unite to bring 
an enduring memorial to your excellence in an art near akin to 
their own. A noble band of your compeers in your own high 
calling, from all parts of the country, offer their salutations and 
praise and good wiflies in a full chorus of respedl and affection. 
Others, who could not accept our invitation, keep the feftival by 
themselves, and are now in their own homes going over the years 
which you have done so much to gladden. 

It is primarily your career as a poet that we celebrate. The 
moment is well chosen. While the mountains and the ocean fide 



ring with the tramp of cavalry and the din of cannon, and the 
nation is in its agony, and an earthquake sweeps through the land, 
we take a respite to escape into the serene region of ideal pursuits 
which can never fail. 

It has been thought praise enough of another to say that he 
" wrote no line which dying he could wifli to blot." Every line 
which you have written may be remembered by yourself and by 
others at all times, for your genius has liftened only to the whisper- 
ings of the beautiful and the pure. 

Moreover, a warm nationality runs through all your verse. 
Your imagination took the hue of the youth of our country, and 
has refledled its calm contemplative moods, when the pulses of its 
early life beat vigoroufly but smoothly, and no bad paflions had 
diftorted its countenance. The clafliing whirlwinds of civil war, 
the sublime energy and perseverance of the people, the martyrdom 
of myriads of its braveft and beft, its new birth through terrible 
sufferings, will give a more paffionate and tragic and varied caft to 
the literature of the coming generations. A thousand years hence 
pofterity will turn to your pages as to those which beft mirror the 
lovely earneftness of the rifing republic, the sweet mufings of her 
years of innocence, when fhe was all unfamiliar with sorrow, bright 
with the halo of promise, seizing the great solitudes by the busy 
hofts of civilization, and guiding the nations of the earth into the 
pleasant paths of freedom and of peace. 

You have derived your inspiration as a poet from your love of 
nature, and {he has returned your afFedlion and blessed you as her 
favored son. At three score and ten years your eye is undimmed, 
your ftep light and free as in youth, and the lyre which ever 
responded so willingly to your touch refuses to leave your hand. 



8 



Our tribute to you is to the poet ; but we fhould not have paid 
it had we not revered you as a man. Your blameless life is a 
continuous record of patriotism and integrity ; and pafling un- 
touched through the fiery conflicts that grow out of the ambition 
of others, you have, as all agree, preserved a perfe£l confiftency 
with yourself, and an unswerving, unselfifh fidelity to your con- 
victions. 

This is high praise, but the period at which we address you 
removes even the suspicion of flattery, for it is your entrance upon 
your seventieth year. It is a solemn thing to draw nearer and 
nearer to eternity ; you teach us how to meet old age. With each 
year you have become more and more genial, have cherifhed larger 
and ftill larger sympathies with your fellow-men, and if time has 
set on you any mark, you preserve in all its freftiness the youth of 
the soul. 

What remains but to wifh you a long-continued life, crowned 
with health and prosperity, with happiness and honour ? Live on 
till you hear your children's children rise up and call you blessed. 
Live on for the sake of us, your old associates, for whom life 
would lose much of its luftre in lofing you as a companion and 
friend. Live on for your own sake, that you may enjoy the better 
day of which your eye already catches the dawn. Where faith 
discerned the Saviour of the world, the unbeliever looked only on 
a man of sorrows, crowned with thorns, and tottering under the 
burden of the cross on which he was to die. The social fkeptic 
sees America fitting apart in her affliction, ftung by vipers at her 
bosom, and welcomed to the pit by " earth's ancient kings ; " but 
through all the anguifti of her grief you teach us to behold her in 
immortal beauty, as fhe fteps onward through trials to brighter 



glory. Live to enjoy her coming triumph, when the acknowledged 
power of right fhall tear the root of sorrow out of the heart of the 
country, and make her more than ever the guardian of human 
liberty and the regenerator of the race. 

MR. Bryant's reply to mr. Bancroft. 

I thank you, Mr. Prefident, for the kind words you have 
uttered, and I thank this good-natured company for having liftened 
to them with so many tokens of assent and approbation. I muft 
suppose, however, that moft of this approbation was beftowed upon 
the orator rather than upon his subjeft. He who has brought to 
the writing of our national hLftory a genius equal to the vaftness 
of the subje6t, has of course more than talent enough for humbler 
talks. I wonder not, therefore, that he fhould be applauded this 
evening for the fkill he has fhown in embelHfhing a barren topic. 

I am congratulated on having completed my seventieth year. 
Is there nothing ambiguous, Mr. Prefident, in such a compliment ? 
To be congratulated on one's senility ! To be congratulated on 
having reached that ftage of life when the bodily and mental 
powers pass into decline and decay ! Lear is made by Shakespeare 
to say, 

" Age is unneccessary ; " 

and a later poet. Dr. Johnson, has expressed • the same idea in one 
of his sonorous lines : 

" Superfluous lags the veteran on the ftage." 

You have not forgotten, Mr. Prefident, the old Greek saying: 

" Whom the gods love die young," — 



10 



nor the passage in Wordsworth 



" Oh, fir, the good die firft, 

And they whose hearts are dry as summer duft, 
Burn to the socket." 

Much has been said of the wisdom of Old Age. Old Age is 
wise, I grant, for itself, but not wise for the community. It is 
wise in declining new enterprises, for it has not the power nor the 
time to execute them ; wise in fhrinking from difficulty, for it has 
not the ftrength to overcome it ; wise in avoiding danger, for it 
lacks the faculty of ready and swift adlion, by which dangers are 
parried and converted into advantages. But this is not wisdom for 
mankind at large, by whom new enterprises muft be undertaken, 
dangers met, and difficulties surmounted. What a world would 
this be if it were made up of old men ! — generation succeeding 
generation of hoary ancients who had but a dozen years or perhaps 
half that time to live ! What new work of good would be at- 
tempted ? what exifting abuse or evil corredled ? What ftrange 
subjedls would such a world afford for the pencils of our artifts — 
groups of superannuated gray-beards baflcing in the sun through the 
long days of spring, or huddling like fheep in warm corners in the 
winter time ; houses with the timbers dropping apart ; cities in 
ruins ; roads unwrought and impassable ; weedy gardens and fields 
with the surface feebly scratched to put in a scanty harvest — 
decrepit old men clambering into crazy wagons, perhaps to be run 
away with, or mounting horses, if they mounted them at all, in 
terror of being hurled from their backs like a fling from a ftone. 
Well it is that in this world of ours the old men are but a very 
small minority. 



11 



Ah, Mr. Prefident, if we could but flop this rufhing tide of 
time that bears us so swiftly onward, and make it flow towards its 
source ; if we could cause the fhadow to turn back on the dial- 
plate ! I see before me many excellent friends of mine, worthy 
to live a thousand years, on whose countenances years have set 
their seal, marking them with the lines of thought and care, and 
caufing their temples to gliften with the frofts of life's autumn. 
If to any one of them could be reftored his glorious prime, his 
golden youth, with its hyacinthine locks, its smooth, unwrinkled 
brow, its frefti and rounded cheek, its pearly and perfe6t teeth, its 
luftrous eyes, its light and bounding ftep, its frame full of energy, 
its exulting spirits, its high hopes, its generous impulses, and, added 
to all these, the experience and fixed principles of mature age, I am 
sure, Mr. Prefident, that I fliould ftart at once to my feet and pro- 
pose that in commemoration of such a marvel and by way of con- 
gratulating our friend who was its subje6l, we fhould hold such a 
feftivity as the Century has never seen nor will ever see again. 
Eloquence fhould bring its highefl: tribute, and Art its faireft 
decorations to grace the fefl:ival ; the moft fkilful muficians fhould 
be here with all manner of infl:ruments of mufic, ancient and 
modern ; we would have sackbut, and trumpet, and fhawm, and 
damsels with dulcimers, and a modern band three times as large as 
the one that now plays on that balcony. But why dwell on such 
a vain dream, fince it is only by pafling through the darkness that 
overhangs the Valley of the Shadow of Death that man can reach 
his second youth ? 

I have read, in descriptions of the old world, of the families 
of princes and barons coming out of their cafl:les to be present at 
some ruftic fefl:ivity, such as a wedding of one of their peasantry. 



u 



I am reminded of this cuftom by the presence of many literary 
persons of eminence in these rooms, and I thank them for this a6l 
of benevolence. Yet I miss among them several whom I had 
wifhed rather than ventured to hope that I fhould meet on this 
occafion. I miss my old friend Dana, who gave so grandly the 
ftory of the Buccaneer in his solemn verses. I miss Pierpont, 
venerable in years, yet vigorous in mind and body, and with an 
undimmed fancy ; and him whose pages are wet with the tears of 
maidens who read the ftory of Evangeline ; and the author of 
Fanny and the Croakers, no less renowned for the fiery spirit which 
animated his Marco Bozzaris ; and him to whose wit we owe the 
Biglow Papers, who has made a lowly flower of the wayfide as 
claflical as the rose of Anacreon ; and the Quaker poet, whose 
verses, Quaker as he is, ftir the blood like the voice of a trumpet 
calling to battle ; and the poetess of Hartford, whose beautiful 
lyrics are in a million hands, and others, whose names, were they 
to occur to me here as in my ftudy, I might accompany with the 
mention of some characteriftic merit. But here is he whose aerial 
verse has raised the little inse6l of our fields making his murmur- 
ing journey from flower to flower, the humble-bee, to a dignity 
equal to that of Pindar's eagle ; here is the Autocrat of the Break- 
faft Table — author of that moft spirited of naval lyrics, beginning 
with the line : 

"Aye, tear her tattered enfign down!" 

here, too, is the poet who told in pathetic verse the ftory of 
Jeptha's daughter, and here are others, worthy compeers of those 
I haVe mentioned, yet greatly my juniors, in the brightness of 
whose rifing fame I am like one who has carried a lantern in the 



J3 

night, and who perceives that its beams are no longer visible in 
the glory which the morning pours around him. To them and to 
all the members of the Century, allow me, Mr. Prefident, to offer 
the wifti that they may live longer than I have done, in health of 
body and mind, and in the same contentment and serenity of spirit 
which has fallen to my lot. I muft not overlook the ladies who 
have deigned to honor these rooms with their presence. If I knew 
where, amid myrtle bowers and flowers that never wither, gufhed 
from the ground the Fountain of Perpetual Youth so long vainly 
sought by the firft Spanifh adventurers on the North American 
continent, I would offer to the lips of every one of them a beaker 
of its frefli and sparkling waters, and bid them drink unfading 
bloom. But fince that is not to be, I will wifti what, perhaps, is 
as well, and what some would think better, that the same kindness 
of heart which has prompted them to come hither to-night, may 
lend a beauty to every adion of their future lives. And to " the 
Century" itself — the dear old Century — to whose members I owe 
both the honors and the embarrassments of this occafion — to that 
association, fortunate in having possessed two such prefidents as 
the diftinguiftied hiftorian, who now occupies the chair, and the 
eminent and accompliftied scholar and admirable writer who pre- 
ceded him, I offer the wifh that it may endure, not only for the 
term of years fignified by its name — not for one century only, but 
for ten centuries — so that hereafter, perhaps, its members may 
discuss the queftion whether its name fhould not be changed to 
that of the Club of a Thousand Years, and that these may be 
centuries of peace and prosperity, from which its members may 
look back to this period of bloody ftrife, as to a frightful dream 
soon chased away by the beams of a glorious morning. 



14 

No sooner had the applause which attended and followed 
Mr. Bryant's remarks subfided, than chorifters in the balcony 
ftruck up a chant for his birthday, by Bayard Taylor : 

I. 

One hour be filent, sounds of war ! 

Delay the battle he foretold, 
And let the bard's triumphant ftar 

Pour down from Heaven its mildeft gold. 

II. 

Let Fame, that plucks but laurel now 

For loyal heroes, turn away, 
And twine, to crown her poet's brow, 

The greener garland of the bay. 

III. 

For he, our earlieft minftrel, fills 

The land with echoes, sweet and long. 

Gives language to her filent hills. 
And bids her rivers move to song. 

IV. 

The Phosphor of the Nation's dawn. 

Sole-risen above our tuneless coaft. 
As Hesper, now, his lamp burns on — 

The leader of the ftarry hoft. 



15 



V. 

He fings of mountains and of ftreams, 

Of ftoried field and haunted dale, 
Yet hears a voice through all his dreams, 

Which says, "The Good ftiall yet prevail." 

VI. 

He fings of Truth, he fings of Right ; 

He fings of Freedom, and his ftrains 
March vv^ith our armies to the fight. 

Ring in the bondman's falling chains. 

VII. 

God, bid him live, till in her place 

Truth, crufhed to earth, again fhall rise — 

The " mother of a mighty race," 
Fulfil her poet's prophecies. 

The mod venerable of American poets would have next 
been looked to ; his absence was explained by 

MR. RICHARD H. DANA'S LETTER TO "THE CENTURY." 

Gentlemen : 

I was much gratified upon seeing in the papers that ^'The 
Century " would keep the day on which my old friend Mr. Bryant 
is to take his place among the septuagenarians : may he live to be 
numbered with the next "upper ten." I am sorry, that, being 
within a very few years of the latter class, and feeling the touch 



i6 



of infirmities, it will be out of my power to take advantage of the 
invitation so kindly extended to me. It is good for us to give 
honour where it is due ; and it would be cheering to me to pay it 
to one who has done so much to throw beauty over our common 
life. As it is, I muft be content at home with setting apart the 
time of your meeting together to thinking upon what you are all 
enjoying, and to going over by myself the many years to which 
our friend has added so much to gladden a protracted life. 

The letter having been read, the Prelident introduced a 
representative of New England : 

MR. RALPH WALDO EMERSON's REMARKS. 

Mr. President: 

Whilft I am grateful to you and to "The Century" for 
the privilege of joining you in this graceful and moft deserved 
homage to our poet, I am a little disconcerted, in the absence of 
some expeded friends from the Bay State, at finding myself put 
forward to speak on their part. Let me say for them that we have 
a property in his genius and virtue. Whilft we delight in your 
love of him, and in his power and reputation in your imperial State, 
we can never forget that he was born on the soil of Massachusetts. 
Your great metropolis is always, by some immense attraction of 
gravity, drawing to itself our beft men. But we forgive you in 
this case the robbery, when we see how nobly you have used him. 
Moreover, the joint posseflion by New York and Massachusetts 
of him, and of others in this great circle of his friends, is one of 



17 



those ethereal hoops which bind these States inseparably in these 
perilous times. 

I join with all my heart in your wifh to honour this native, fin- 
cere, original, patriotic poet. I say original : I have heard him 
charged with being of a certain school. I heard it with surprise, 
and afked, what school ? for he never reminded me of Goldsmith, 
or Wordsworth, or Byron, or Moore. I found him always origi- 
nal, a true painter of the face of this country, and of the sentiment 
of his own people. When I read the verses of popular American 
and Englifli poets, I often think that they appear to have gone into 
the Art Galleries and to have seen piilures of mountains, but this 
man to have seen mountains. With his ftout ftaff he has climbed 
Greylock and the White Hills, and sung what he saw. He 
renders Berkfhire to me in verse, with the sober coloring, too, to 
which nature cleaves, only now and then permitting herself the 
scarlet and gold of the prism. It is his proper praise, that he firft 
and he only made known to mankind our northern landscape — its 
summer splendor, its autumn russet, its winter lights and glooms. 
And he is original because he is fincere. Many young men write 
verse which ftrikes by talent, but the writer has not committed 
himself, the man is not there, it is written at arm's length, he could 
as well have written on any other theme : it was not neceflitated 
and autobiographic, and therefore it does not imprint itself on the 
memory, and return for thought and consolation in our solitary 
hours. But our friend's inspiration is from the inmoft mind ; he 
has not a labial but a cheft voice, and you fhall dete6l the taftes 
and experiences of the poem in his daily life. 

Like other poets — more than other poets — with his expanding 
genius his ambition grew. Fountain-heads and pathless groves did 



i8 



not content him. It is a national fin. There is, you know, an 
optical diftemper endemic in the City of Washington, contraded 
by Senators and others who once look at the Prefident's chair; 
their eyes grow to it ; they can never again take their eyes off it. 
The virus once in is not to be got out of the syftem. Our friend 
had not this malady, but has symptoms of another, 

" That laft infirmity of noble minds." 

Ah, gentlemen ! so cold and majeftic as he fits here, I fear 
this fin burned at his heart — well hid, I own ; never was man 
more modeft, less boaftful, less egotiftical. But you remember 
that wicked Phidias, who, after making his divine Minerva, carved 
his own image with such deep incifion into the shield, that it could 
not be effaced without destroying the statue. But this artist of 
ours, with deeper cunning, has contrived to levy on all American 
nature, has subfidized every solitary grove and monument-mountain 
in Berkshire or the Katskills, every gleaming water, the "gardens 
of the Desert," every waterfowl and woodbird, the evening wind, 
the stormy March, the song of the stars ; — has suborned every one 
of these to speak for him, so that there is no feature of day or 
night in the country which does not, to a contemplative mind, 
recall the name of Bryant. This high-handed usurpation of what- 
ever is sweet or sublime, I charge him with, and, on the top of 
this, with the sorcery of making us hug our fetters and rejoice in 
our subjugation. 

Then, fir, for his patriotism — we all know the deep debt which 
the country owes to the accomplished journalist, who, the better to 
carry the ends which his heart defired, left the studies and retire- 
ments dear to his muse, adapted his voice to the masses to be 



19 



reached, and the great cause to be sustained — was content to drop 
"the garland and finging-robes of the poet," and, mafking his 
Tyrtaean elegies in the plain speech of the street, sounded the 
key-note of policy and public duty to the American people, in a 
manner and with an effe6t of the highest service to the Republic. 

Before I fit down, let me apply to him a verse addressed by 
Thomas Moore to the poet Crabbe, and Moore has written few 
better : 

" True bard, and fimple as the race 
Of heaven-born poets always are, 
When ftooping from their ftarry place. 
They're children near, but gods afar." 

The audience liftened widi hearty approval to the gener- 
ous tribute from one man of genius to another. From all 
parts of the country representatives were present. The plat- 
form was next taken by a representative of Pennsylvania, 
who did but embody the sentiments and wifhes of all around 
him. 

BRYANT. 

November ^th., 1864. 

BY GEORGE H. BOKER. 

With timid steps, as one who enters in 
A solemn temple from the city's din. 
And hears behind the mighty portals close 
Upon the world's long chase of joys and woes ; 



20 



And half forgets his mission, through intense 

Awe at the chancel's calm magnificence : 

So I, a stranger with a recent name — 

More on the people's than the lips of fame — 

In this august assemblage faltering stand, 

And doubt the right I use by your command. 

Behold the temple that around me lies, 

A growth of earth, but swelling to the fkies ; 

Raised in a night, that he who fills the shrine, 

Founder and glory of our tuneful line. 

May hold the state his genius owns by right. 

And claim our homage in the nation's sight. 

What prouder pile was ever built by hands 

Than that which fancy, as her eye expands, 

Shapes from this mass of noble forms and minds, 

Builds as she broods, and in one structure binds ? 

I see before me, clustered fide by fide. 

The stateliest columns of my country's pride, — 

Poets, historians, and those whose art 

Makes fiction truth, and gives to shadows heart. 

A storied frieze their laureled brows uphold. 

Enriched with legends grand and manifold ; 

Or glowing with that quiet hearth-fide light 

Which makes the homeliest face beloved and bright. 

To right and left, wide chapels flash their store 

Of painted wonders from the walls, and pour 

A flood of glory on each hand that wrought 

Its new creation from exhaustless thought. 

Here rest the sculptured shapes that never know 



21 



A mortal touch to paflion's ebb or flow. 

Calm in their deathless grace and changeless mood, 

They front their fate with godlike fortitude, 

Or breathe their love in ever-listening ears, 

Or drop in sorrow their eternal tears ; 

Kneel at a tomb whence human grief has fled. 

And pray to Heaven for man's forgotten dead. 

Shall I, half trembling at the thing I do. 

Speak of the windows, whence the light shines through 

Upon this world of art ? O critics keen. 

Your lucid minds give splendor to the scene ; 

You are the medium of the heavenly rays ; 

Groups, pictures, poems kindle in your blaze. 

Without your aid we see no art aright ; 

But is't not sometimes party-coloured light 

That flames upon us from your tinted panes. 

And haply glorifies, or haply stains ? 

I shall not afk. The marvel of the roof. 

That crowns this temple draws my eyes aloof. 

Wide as God's azure vault it spreads above, 

A perfe6t dome of man's triumphant love ; 

And all the vastness of its cloudless cope 

Burns with the stars of memory and of hope. 

Such is your temple, Bryant ! Do I strain 

The figure farther than the fails sustain ? 

Look on the neighbouring groups, ye doubting few, 

And own yourselves convicSled at the view. 

To me the fight of those assembled here 

Will be a wonder till my latest year. 



22 



My memory holds no pi6i:ure in its round 

So pure in aim, in justice so profound, 

So free from any paflion that might taint 

The holiest scene man's cunning art could paint ; 

Nor can I hope, outliving Nestor's years, 

To see again these intelleilual peers 

Marshal their ranks, to honour any chief 

With joy's acclaims, or with the tears of grief. 

'T were vain in me to ape great Homer's plan. 

And give his title to each noted man. 

Why should I echo an illustrious name, 

Already sounding from the lips of Fame ? 

Or like a wren, my twittering notes prolong 

Amidst these fky-larks of our native song? 

Thus much however ; what the wren may owe 

The morning's laureate, I am proud to show. 

Great Master of my Country's earnest lyre, 

What heart so humble that cannot aspire 

With grateful pride, to feel itself the while 

Blessed by the bounty of your generous smile ? 

To know, though vexed with doubts and crossed with fears, 

That from the audience Bryant bends and hears ; 

And in the largess of his patient heart. 

Takes the intention as the deed's best part ? 

Why should I tremble, holding by the hand 

That led my youth across his wondrous land ? 

Through every feeling that can move the mind. 

Through noisy joy, through sorrow dumb and blind. 

Through the cool ways of philosophic thought. 



23 



Over the fields where bloody frays were fought, 

Into the filence of the forest nook, 

Down the green pathway of the primrose brook. 

By God's own gardens in the meadows sown. 

Around the prairie's fky-encompassed zone, 

Across the fiery steps of dying day. 

Where the lone wild-fowl winged his fearless way. 

Up to the peaks that bury in the sun 

Their golden foreheads, where the bright stars run 

Their filver circle round the frozen pole. 

And through the mysteries of man's solemn soul, 

O Bryant, partner of my path and guide, 

We two have journeyed onward fide by fide. 

Yours was the realm. At your imperial look 

The dew-drop glittered and the gentian shook. 

The circling swallow dipped his restless wings. 

The feathered conclave perched in filent rings, 

The furry beast came purring to your feet. 

All Nature bowed before your sovereign seat. 

Crowned with the laurel, sceptred with the lyre. 

Sage with the secrets of its magic wire ; 

Wearing the purple by a right divine. 

That shamed the claimants of the haughtiest line ; 

Amongst the votaries of your throne I stood 

With regal longings stirring in my blood. 

Blame not a boy, if I essayed ere long 

To catch the key-note of your matchless song. 

Failed at the first, as at this latest hour, 

But, failing, learned the mystery of your power. 



24 



Hearken, ye bards who err by rigid rules, 

And wear the tawdry Hvery of the schools ; 

Who strive to shine as other lights have shone, 

And envying others, forfeit what's your own ! 

Write, as he wrote, with honest, fimple pains, 

Out of the seeds God planted in your brains. 

Out of the fulness of your nation's heart, 

Nor vex the dead with imitative art ; 

Nor cross the natural limit of the seas, 

To seek a strength that fills our stronger breeze. 

For were the copy as the first mould cast, — 

Out on the thing ! a copy 'tis at last ! 

By mere descent no poet shall be known ; 

Each royal minstrel holds his separate throne. 

And o'er his state a seraph's brand is whirled : 

One Milton is enough for any world. 

Poet revered, you taught this lesson first. 

As from the bondage of the schools you burst. 

And filled our startled but delighted sense 

With our wide land's discovered affluence j 

Gave the scorned legends of our narrow past 

Another colour and more graceful cast ; 

Touched the wild flowers beneath our lucid fkies, 

And shook their glimmer in the dreamer's eyes ; 

Made history light upon unstoried hills. 

And breathed a voice along our savage rills ; 

Spread over all the haze of fresh romance. 

Till Europe wondered through her doubting glance ; 

But wondered more that every tone rang out 



2? 



The clarion challenge of a freeman's shout ; 

Sounding defiance to their castes and kings, 

Their courtly follies over empty things ; 

But, O my Bryant, tempered sweet and low, 

To tenderest pity, was your mufic's flow 

Over the trampled serfs that raised their groans 

Beneath the shadows of resplendent thrones. 

Warm was the welcome of the hand you gave 

Across our threshold to the fleeing flave ; 

And stern the courage of your angry frown, 

When tyrants raged for what they called their own. 

You were the first who made us clearly see, 

'In rhythmic words, how grand 'tis to be free ; 

Sang to the world the spirit of our land. 

And waved her standard from your spotless hand ; 

Taught every child the glory of his birth. 

And spread his heritage around the earth ; 

Made youth feel stronger, that his life began 

Here in the front of freedom's hardy van ; 

Consoled the sage against foreboding fears. 

And starred with hopes the shadows of his years. 

Two lives the poet lives, 'tis said. In you 

Both gently mingle in a man so true 

To the pure instin6ls of his sacred gift. 

That flander's self can point no adverse drift. 

Whether the subtle rhetoric of your pen 

In prose or verse address itself to men. 

Or the convincing logic of your tongue. 

With which the rostrums of the State have rung, 
4 



26 



Be raised in counsel ; who will dare to say 

They passed truth's landmarks for a novel way ; 

Or ranged themselves, in peace or open fight, 

On any fide but on the fide of right ? 

So well the man becomes the poet's crown. 

That each gives each a measure of renown ; 

Imbue each other, form a perfedl whole. 

And top our race with one exalted soul. 

Let me no longer try the public ear 

With what men knew before they entered here ; 

Or mar your title with my tedious lines, 

And breathe a mist upon a thing that shines. 

We hail you, poet, with our greeting shout ; 

From this thronged hall the cry goes rolling out 

Above the city, that takes up the sound. 

And spreads the welcome to the country round. 

Each fruitful valley and each echoing hill. 

That feel the touch of your fame-giving will. 

Wake as the tones Aide down the happy gales, 

To wave our flag, or fill our swelling sails. 

The dew-beads twinkle, and the wild-flowers nod ; 

The robins carol from the tawny sod ; 

The flave turns lightly in his galling chain, 

Prays low, then dreams of liberty again. 

Nature and man repeat the mystic thrill. 

That proved the power of the magician's fkill, 

When, as a youth, you struck your country's lyre. 

And filled its pauses with your spirit's fire. 

Long may the years that hear your powerful rhyme. 



27 

Stretch out your life along the coming time ! 

We hear no discord, nothing of decay 

In the fresh mufic of your latest lay. 

Youth nerves the poet ; why may not the man 

Leave far behind the Psalmist's fated span ; 

Like a pure tone, his purer life prolong, 

Live with the life of his immortal song ? 

God grant it, Bryant ! I have not a prayer 

That would not clamber up the heavenly air. 

To kneel before the splendor of the Throne, 

If thus another blefling could be sown 

In the fair garden of your blooming days, 

Already fragrant with a nation's praise. 

Bright with the wreaths the total world hath given, 

And warm with love that's sanctified by Heaven. 

The great Weft sent an honored artift and poet, who 
travelled eight hundred miles by night and day, to appear in 
its behalf; and these are the ftanzas in which he expressed 
the spirit of those from whom he came : 

TO BRYANT. 

BY THOMAS BUCHANAN READ. 

What time I ope, with reverential love. 

One of the charmed volumes of my choice, 

I hear, as in the cloisters of the grove. 
The solemn mufic of thy Druid voice. 



28 



All fights and sounds that can delight impart, 
Or whatsoe'er athwart thy vifion swims, 

Before the altar of the world's great heart, 
Thou nobly breathest in undying hymns. 

For thy broad love there is no flower too small, 
Nor scene too vast for thy encircling mind ; 

Thy heart is one with Nature's, yet o'er all 
Rises its sweet vibration for mankind. 

The faintest breath that finds a flowery nook. 
The flying winds with wise and gust-Hke locks, 

The pebble which the lapidary brook 

Rounds into form — or ocean-scorning rocks ; 

The burnished blue-bird, with his spring-time song. 
The azure-winged runnel's April call j 

The timid wren, the falcon fierce and strong. 
The soaring water-fowl, the swooping fall ; 

The glow-worm's lantern and the lunar car. 
The midnight taper and the noonday sun. 

The pool where swims the lily like a star. 
The boundless sea, with lily sails o'errun ; 

The brooklet blade the lightest wavelet moves. 
Where childhood's paper sails are set unfurled. 

The antique home of shade, the oaken groves. 
Growing the ponderous navies of the world ; 



29 

The peaceful hearthstone and the roaring field, 
The song-bird and our eagle on his crag, 

The love of all that quiet home can yield. 
The love of country, freedom, and her flag ; 

All these are thine, thou pioneer of song. 

Bard of the prairie and primeval grove. 
And unto thee our praise may well belong — 

Yea, more than praise — the homage of our love. 

And this is thine, and therefore I obey. 
And bow^ before thy Druid locks of snow. 

And on thy sacred altar here I lay 

My votive branch of western misletoe. 

From the Britifli Provinces there was received an assur- 
ance that the Saint Lawrence cannot set bounds to the 
friendly recognition of merit. 

EXTRACT OF A GREETING FROM CANADA TO WILLIAM CULLEN 
BRYANT ON HIS yOTH BIRTHDAY. 

All honor to the lyric few 

Of every land and nation, 
The tuneful throng whose souls of song 

Are deeps of inspiration. 
O ! sad old world, where were thy boast 

Unless these struck the lyre ! 



30 



Thou had'st no mental Pentecost 

But for their tongues of fire. 
The sacred oracles of God 

Each heaven-transmitted token, 
The inspired word in vifions heard, 

Through poet-souls were spoken. 
All honor, then, ye men of men. 

In Bardic love assembled. 
Whose truths have flown from zone to zone, 

While error paused and trembled. 
Columbia's boast ! her lark-like host. 

In lyric strength reliant. 
Their carcanet of lays would set 

Around the name of Bryant. 
And well they may ; each loving lay. 

Thrice-earned, is his in duty ; 
For who so well hath tuned the shell 

To nature's worth and beauty ! 
His burning lyre, his heart on fire 

With paflion true and fervent ; 
A soul to feel for woe or weal ! 

Truth's champion, priest, and servant. 
To sterling worth their hearts go forth, 

Vieing with one another ; 
With eager feet they come to greet 

Their patriarchal brother. 
No rival stands with folded hands, 

But with one voice compliant. 



31 



The gifted throng, each heir of song, 

Rings out the fame of Bryant. 
Here e'en as there, our hearts can share 

The greetings flung before him j 
In love to-day we're rich as they 

Who shed their halos o'er him. 

Charles Sangster. 

Kingston, Canada West. 

It had been hoped diat the great people from whom we 
inherit the beft language ever used by man, fince that of 
Homer and Plato died away, would have been represented 
at the feftival by one who has a Angular command of that 
language in its richness, delicacy, and ftrength. The Prefi- 
dent could only produce an 

EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM MR. GOLDWIN SMITH. 

*' I am fincerely sorry to miss the opportunity of taking part in 
any tribute of respeil to Mr. Bryant. I beg you will assure him 
of this, and wish him joy, in my name, of the public gratitude 
which crowns his bright and honorable career." 

The admirers of the beft poetry are not confined to men. 
Offerings, voluntary, or in response to invitations, were re- 
ceived from the other sex. 



32 



EXTRACT FROM MISS C. M. SEDGWICK S LETTER TO W. J. HOPPIN. 

" WooDBOURNE (near Bofton), October 3IJ/, 1864. 

" It is one of the severest of my privations that ill-health com- 
pels me to decline the very gratifying invitation from the Century. 
No one could participate more earnestly than myself in an honor 
rendered to my friend Mr. Bryant, to whose genius my heart has 
given homage from its first budding to the ripening of its fruits in 
their present sweetness and immortal perfedtion. To this homage 
is added the reverence due to his charadler, and to the patriotic 
service he has done for his country in keeping the fire brightly 
burning in his watch-tower through all its weal and woe. I am 
happy in believing that some of the members of ' The Century ' 
will be glad to know that they have enriched me with pleasant 
memories which, in some sort, console me for my enforced absence 
from the coming celebration. There are lights and consolations 
for the dimmed hours never perceived or known till they come. 
Believe me, my dear Mr. Hoppin, gratefully yours, 

" C. M. Sedgwick." 



To WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, 

TVith a blossom of Edelweiss, _/>(?;« the Swiss Alps^ eleven thousand 
feet above the level of the sea. 

BY MARY H. C. BOOTH, OF WISCONSIN. 

Not from the cultured gardens. 
And not from the daified sod, 



(C 



33 



Do I bring my little offering, 

But down from the hills of God. 

Down from the crystal mountains, 
Where never a flower was sown, 

Save the flower that God has planted. 
In fight of the Great White Throne. 

From over the nests of the eagles 

And under the Angels' feet, 
Where the opal airs of summer 

And the winds of winter meet, 
A flower I bring, an offering 

From the snow hill's filver crest. 
And leave sweet songs and silver crowns 

And earth flowers for the rest. 

The Alpine hunters tell us 

That, when a Poet dies, 
God meets him at the Golden Gate 

Crowned with the Edelweiss; 
But only those who worshipped Him 

In finging nature's praise, 
And walked befide Him on the hills 

And through Life's lonely ways. 

Oh King of nature's songsters ! 

And thus I bring to thee 
This blossom, from the Alpine hills. 

The glorious and free, 

5 



34 

That, when the Angels bid thee pause 
Where oft thy soul hath trod, 

To crown thee on the mountain tops. 
Upon thy way to God — 

Thou then may'st recognise the flower 

As one, while yet below 
And walking in the earthly ways. 

Thou yet had'st learned to know. 
Thus, from no cultured garden. 

And not from the daified sod, 
Do I bring my little offering. 

But down from the hills of God. 



November 5th, 1864. 



A beautiful wreath composed of natural flowers, white 
lilies, amaranths, and red roses, intermixed with myrtle and 
bay, was sent to Mr. Bryant by an unknown lady, with a 
copy of verses in his honor, which flie described as 

" Simple blossoms of the soul 
Budding forth without control." 

Mrs. Sigourney reludantly refigned the " opportunity of 
paying respeft to one whose high and pure poetical genius 
has rendered his name illuftrious in our country and the 
world ; " and contributed the following ftanzas : 



35 



THE SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY OF WILLIAM 
CULLEN BRYANT. 

BY L. HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY. 

Honor to him, the loved of all, 

The mafter of our Weftern lyre ! 
Who o'er his country's heart hath thrown 

The melody with which his own 
Hath ever dwelt, fliaping its tone, 
To heavenly choir. 

Honor to him whose early years 

The old Homeric fire displayed. 
And now to Wisdom's ripened truth 

Hath brought the sunbeams of his youth, 
Without a fhade. 

All hail to him, whose genial ftrain 

Nor bitterness nor satire knew. 
But from the charms of Nature's face 

And virtue's dignity and grace 
Its impulse drew. 

All hail ! and ftill through lengthened days 

May his pure thoughts unsullied flow, 
And in the alembic of the mind. 

Mingling like molten gold refined. 
Through future ages on mankind 
Their wealth beftow. 
Hartford, Conn., 1864. 



36 

The assembly was becoming impatient to hear the voice 
of a gifted woman, a native of New York City, who was 
present. The Preiident, following their intimation, led her 
to the platform, where flie recited a poem. 

A LEAF FROM THE BRYANT CHAPLET. 

BY JULIA WARD HOWE. 

Friends who greet the crowned Poet, who detain the pafling year 
With the love that knows no pafling, I attend your summons here. 
Had ye suffered me in filence, I had thanked your courteous grace, 
Happier yet, in rites so cordial, to have utterance and place. 

In your city rows palatial has a manfion flood apart, 
Not in aspedl nor pretenfion, fingle in its saintly heart ; 
When the tides of greed and traffic swept the limits of the town, 
'Twas a citadel of virtue and a fhrine of pure renown. 

There the Muse that knew Anacreon, that made Roman Horace 

great. 
Shunning Caesar's jewelled favors, at the modeft firefide sate. 
Lit the wintry coals with splendor, turned the deep hiftoric page, 
Held the burning lamp of Fancy to the problems of the age ; 

When the great ideas came fmgly to the crowded market-place, 
Looking wanly for a welcome in each money-getting face. 
And the high police of fafliion urged the vagrants to give room. 
They, our Chief of song encountering, grew speedily at home. 



37 \ 

He had many a measure for us ; at his forge he wrought two-fold, 
On the iron fhield of Freedom, and the poet's Hnks of gold. 
All the while a song was finging, others better knew than he, 
For the even ftanzas of his life made subtleft melody. 

He was a veteran leader ere his forehead gained its snows ; 
And ftill before the pilgrim flock his filver summons goes. 
No wild and desert wafte he brings, with lurid day and night. 
But paftures of serenity, and founts of clear delight. 

We have journeyed far to praise him, let us also praise the hour. 
For the travail throes of Conscience, and the newest birth of 

power ; 
Let us praise the faultless vi<3:ims, and the living who have bent 
O'er the wealth of Nature raviflied, with a terrible consent. 

For sorrow from the city to the martial camp has fled. 

To hunt, with her funereal torch, the features of the dead. 

Another and another son the fatal fheaf doth bind. 

But nothing of the thoughts of God, or hope of human kind. 

Resurreftion in the valley ! Resurreftlon on the fhore ! 

When great Juftice is eftabliflied, we fhall have our own once 

more ; 
Not like us, unfixed, inconftant in our issues great and small. 
But a phalanx set in marble for the future's judgment call. 

Long remain the noble Poet, priceless hoftage of our love ! 
Vainly floats the winged message from the banquet halls of Jove, 



38 

Vainly voices from Valhalla name the champion of the free j 
He has paeans yet to utter, he muft crown our victory. 

When the moment comes to claim him, that muft come to claim 

us all, 
Hearts that cherifh human longings will be darkened by his fall ; 
But immortal Truth fhall welcome her adorer to her breaft, 
Saying: "Things are changed between us now ; on earth I was 

thy gueft." 

As file ended, her charmed hearers were ftill liftening to 
her words, pronounced in exquiiitely mufical tones, when 
Mr. Cranch handed to the Prefident a letter for Mr. Bryant, 
which was read before delivery. 

Century Rooms, New York, No-v. i, 1864. 

Dear Sir : 

At a meeting of the Artift-members of the Century, it was 
agreed that some fimple but appropriate teftimonial of the honor 
and efteem in which you are held among us, ought to be presented 
by us to you, on your 70th birthday. On this feftive occafion, 
when the Century fteps forward to honor the Patriot and Poet 
who has so long and faithfully served his country in his verse 
and in the columns of his Journal, we, too, wifh to express our 
confideration of the sympathy you have ever manifefted towards 
the Artifts, and the high rank you have ever accorded to art. Be 
assured, dear Sir, that the tribute of our love and admiration is not 
formal, but cordial. And as we are accuftomed neither to speech- 



39 



making nor to elaborate letter-writing, we defire that the few 
words we have to say, may be said not to you only, but to the 
friends who will gather here to greet you on your birthday. 

We afk you then, dear Sir, to accept from the Artift-members 
of the Century, a portfolio of Sketches, knowing no more expres- 
five form of teftifying to you the sentiments with which we fhall 
meet you on the evening of your approaching anniversary. 

We have the honor to be, in behalf of the Artifts, the Com- 
mittee, 

Daniel Huntington, 
asher b. durand, 
Christopher P. Cranch. 

The artifts are the heart of the Century ; as soon as the 
letter was read, the crowded company opened a passage, and 
a portfolio was brought in, mounted on a ftand of the niceft 
workmanfliip, and made to contain finiflied fketches by the 
members, whose names follow : 



Eugene Benson, 
Albert Bierstadt, 
Carl Brandt, 
H. R. Brown, 
Frederick E. Church, 
Samuel Colman, 
Christopher P. Cranch, 
Jasper P. Cropsey, 
W. P. W. Dana, 



Felix O. C. Darley, 

A. B. DuRAND, 

C. D. Gambrill, 

S. R. GiFFORD, 

Regis Gignoux, 
Henry Peters Gray, 
George H. Hall, 
W. J. Hays, 
William Hazeltine, 



40 



W. J. Hennessy, 
Thomas Hicks, 
Daniel Huntington, 
Eastman Johnson, 
John F. Kensett, 
Edward I. Kuntze, 
John La Faroe, 
Louis Lang, 
Thomas Le Clear, 
E. Leutze, 
H. A. Loop, 
Jervis McEntee, 

William 



E. D. Nelson, 
Richard H. Park, 
h. w. robbins, 
Richard M. Staigg, 
J. B. Stearns, 
William Oliver Stone, 
James A. Suydam, 
Bayard Taylor, 
Launt Thompson, 
Eliphalet Terry, 
Calvert Vaux, 
J. Q, A. Ward, 
Whittredge. 



At the same moment, Mr. Daniel Huntington, Prefident 
of the National Academy of Defign, ftepped upon the plat- 
form, and addressed his friend of many years. 



remarks of MR. HUNTINGTON. 



Honored and beloved Poet : The artifts of this club have en- 
trufted me with the privilege of presenting to you this colledtion 
of fketches, in token of their love and admiration. A beautiful 
ftand and portfolio have been added through the liberaHty of seve- 
ral amateur members. There is an illuftrious artift, whose name, 
like your own, is imperifhably traced in the interwoven ftory of 
our art and literature, who, from his intimate relations with you. 



41 

as well as from his long acknowledged leaderfliip in our profeflion, 
is entitled to the honor of ailing for us on this occafion ; but 
Durand is absent or lilent, and therefore I have the pleasure, in 
his name, and in behalf of all the artifts, of greeting you to-night 
as one of their own body. Indeed, Sir, the artifts love you very 
much, and you know it ; we claim you as one of us, remembering 
that you were one of the original members of the old Sketch Club, 
and a member and founder of the National Academy of Defign — 
a brother of the pencil moft dear to all our hearts. The fketches 
for the portfolio have not all been finiftied, owing to the fhortness 
of the time, the late return of many from their autumn haunts, and 
their defire to make their offerings worthy of their purpose. Such 
a labor of love will not be (lightly done, and when soon it fhall be 
completed, it will be marked by the warm affedion and deep rever- 
ence we feel for our poet-brother in the divine art. 

Of the vaft multitudes who, with ever-growing delight, bend 
over your pages, or of those more familiar friends who have met 
here to do you honor, there are none whose hearts glow with 
deeper joy and pride than do those of the artifts who to-night take 
part in this feftival solemnity. For many years, by mountain and 
ftream, and in the ftillness of the ftudio, we have been cheered by 
your vivid pi6lures of American scenery, and inspired by your songs 
of human freedom, and we pray that God may grant you yet many 
years to charm our hearts with new images of truth and beauty ; 
and when this dark and bloody war-cloud shall have passed forever, 
in the serene evening of your life, to fing for our whole people 
the cradle-song of a new-born American Liberty. 
6 



42 



MR. BRYANT ANSWERED : 

Allow me, through you, as one of their representatives, to 
return to the artifts of the Century my beft acknowledgments for 
the superb gift they have made me. I have no title to it but their 
generofity, yet I rejoice to possess it, and fhall endeavor to preserve 
it as long as I live. 

Among the artifts of our country are some of my oldest and 
best friends. In their conversation I have taken great delight, and 
derived from it much inftruilion. In them the love and the study 
of nature tend to preserve the native fimplicity of charafter, to 
make them frank and ingenuous and to divert their attention from 
selfifh interests. I fhall prize this gift, therefore, not only as a 
memorial of the genius of our artists, in which respe6t alone it 
possesses a high value, but also as a token of the good will of a 
class of men for whom I cherifh a particular regara and esteem. 



This very interesting interlude was watched with the 
most marked sympathy by the numerous audience, who were 
especially touched by the iincere and fimple words : " the 
artists love you, and you know it." The East, the West, 
the South, had given exprelTion to their sentiments ; so soon 
as Mr. Huntington stepped down, the Prefident introduced 
him who was to speak for the whole country, for its one 
people, and its full conftellation of States. 



43 
BRYANT'S SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY. 

BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 

O even-handed Nature ! we confess 

This life that men so honor, love, and bless. 

Has filled thine olden measure. Not the less 

We count the precious seasons that remain ; 

Strike not the level of the golden grain. 

But heap it high with years, that earth may gain 

What heaven can lose, — for heaven is rich in song : 

Do not all poets, dying, still prolong 

Their broken chants amid the seraph throng. 

Where, blind no more, Ionia's bard is seen. 
And England's heavenly minstrel fits between 
The Mantuan and the wan-cheeked Florentine ? 

This was the first sweet finger in the cage 
Of our close-woven life. A new-born age 
Claims in his vesper song its heritage : 

Spare us, oh spare us long our heart's defire ! 
Moloch, who calls our children through the fire, 
Leaves us the gentle master of the lyre. 

We count not on the dial of the sun 

The hours, the minutes, that his sands have run ; 

Rather, as on those flowers that one by one 



44 



From earliest dawn their ordered bloom display- 
Till evening's planet with her guiding ray 
Leads in the blind old mother of the day, 

We reckon by his songs, each song a flower. 
The long, long daylight, numbering hour by hour, 
Each breathing sweetness like a bridal bower. 

His morning glory fhall we e'er forget ? 
His noon-tide's full-blown lily coronet ? 
His evening primrose has not opened yet ; 

Nay, even if creeping Time fhould hide the fkies 
In midnight from his century-laden eyes, 
Darkened like his who sang of Paradise, 

Would not some hidden song-bud open bright 

As the resplendent cactus of the night 

That floods the gloom with fragrance and with light ? 

How can we praise the verse whose mufic flows 
With solemn cadence and majestic close, 
Pure as the dew that filters through the rose ? 

How fliall we thank him that in evil days 
He faltered never, — nor for blame, nor praise, 
Nor hire, nor party, fhamed his earlier lays ? 

But as his boyhood was of manliest hue. 
So to his youth his manly years were true. 
All dyed in royal purple through and through ! 



45 



He for whose touch the lyre of Heaven is strung 
Needs not the flattering toil of mortal tongue : 
Let not the finger grieve to die unsung ! 

Marbles forget their message to mankind : 

In his own verse the poet still we find, 

In his own page his memory lives enfhrined, 

As in their amber sweets the smothered bees, — 
As the fair cedar, fallen before the breeze, 
Lies self-embalmed amidst the mouldering trees. 

Poets, like youngest children, never grow 
Out of their mother's fondness. Nature so 
Holds their soft hands, and will not let them go. 

Till at the last they track with even feet 
Her rhythmic footsteps, and their pulses beat 
Twinned with her pulses, and their lips repeat 

The secrets fhe has told them, as their own : 
Thus is the inmost soul of Nature known, 
And the rapt minstrel fhares her awful throne ! 

O lover of her mountains and her woods. 

Her bridal chamber's leafy solitudes, 

Where Love himself with tremulous step intrudes. 

Her snows fall harmless on thy sacred fire : 
Far be the day that claims thy sounding lyre 
To join the mufic of the angel choir ! 



46 

Yet, fince life's amplest measure must be filled, 
Since throbbing hearts must be forever stilled, 
And all must fade that evening sunsets gild. 

Grant, Father, ere he close the mortal eyes 

That see a Nation's reeking sacrifice. 

Its smoke may vanifli from these blackened ikies ! 

Then, when his summons comes, fince come it must. 
And, looking heavenward with unfaltering trust. 
He wraps his drapery round him for the dust. 

His last fond glance will show him o'er his head 
The Northern fires beyond the zenith spread 
In lambent glory, blue and white and red, — 

The Southern cross without its bleeding load, 

The milky way of peace all freshly strowed, 

And every white-throned star fixed in its lost abode ! 

These lines were illuminated by the earneftness with 
which they were pronounced; the eye and voice of the 
speaker interpreted and vivified every word. He was heard 
with the greateft enthuiiasm ; it seemed, that like the beil 
mailers of painting in Italy, the poet was attaining a second 
manner, even more beautiful than his firft, and had seized 
the occafion of an act of friendly juftice to another, to make 
a revelation of his own increase of power. 



47 

The Prefident, with Mrs. Bryant, followed by Mr. Bryant 
and Mrs. Howe, now led the way to the banqueting-room, 
of which the walls were adorned by pidures, painted by 
artifts of the Century. All eyes turned to the portrait of 
Bryant by his venerable friend Durand, which was profusely 
decorated with laurel and the choiceft natural flowers. After 
a fliort time given to the abundant feast provided by the 
House Committee of the Century, the company returned to 
the large saloon, where their first greeting was from the 
clergy. 

The venerable Rev. Dr. Allen, formerly Prefident of 
Bowdoin College, and honorably known to all students of 
American Biography, the friend of Bryant's father, familiar 
with the home of Bryant from his cradle, sent this bene- 
didion : 



FOURSCORE YEARS TO THREESCORE YEARS 

AND TEN. 

November 3^, 1864. 

Thy years threescore and ten this day ! 

Thy youthful poet-prophet's word 
Of Truth's great confli6l made display, 

By which the soldier's soul is stirred. 



48 



" Truth, crufhed to earth, fliall rise again ; 
The eternal years of God are hers ; 
But error, wounded, writhes in pain. 
And dies among his worfhippers." 

Bryant's Poems, page 209. 

Another ten of years be thine 

With His great love who came to save, 
And ceaseless joys of truth divine 

To cheer thy pathway to the grave. 

The hills the same to our young eyes, 
The same the vales, that gave delight ; 

The loved ones, passed to peaceful Ikies, 
Shall we not join in glory bright ? 

Christ is the "Way, the Truth, the Life;' 
He leads no trusting friend astray; 

His arm will end the valiant strife. 
His grace give victor's crown for aye ! 



To William Cullen Bryant, New York, 

from William Allen, Northampton, Mass, 
both natives of Western Massachusetts. 



■1 



The next communication was from the Rev. Dr. James 
Walker, late Prefident of the Univerfity of Cambridge. 

EXTRACT OF DR. WALKER's LETTER. 

"I feel a peculiar interest in the festival in honor of Mr. 
Bryant, for I am a man of the same years, though having a few 



49 



months the start of him. I should also be glad to be there in 
order to testify the respeft I have always entertained for his genius 
and charadter." 



A highly respefted Protestant Episcopal Clergyman of 
the far West sent the following : 

To WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT, 

ON HIS SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY. 

November 3, 1864. 

Thy patient feet have reached to-day 

The allotted goal of human years ; 
Thanks, thanks to Him w^ho bids thee stay 

Awhile, yet, from the timeless spheres. 

Thanks for thy journey brave and long ; 

A glorious pathway has it been. 
Melodious with majestic song. 

And hallowed in the hearts of men. 

Earth's face is dearer for thy gaze. 

The fields that thou hast travelled o'er 
Are fuller blossomed, and the ways 

Of toil more pleasant than before. 



^o 



The April pastures breathe more sweet, 
The brooks in deeper mufings glide, 

Old woodlands grander hymns repeat, 
And holier seems the Autumn-tide. 

The crystal founts and summer rains 
Are haunted now with pi£lured grace ; 

The winds have learned more tender strains. 
And greet us with more kind embrace. 

More meekly pleads each flow'ret's eye, 
On gentler errands comes the snow, 

And birds write on the evening fky 
More gracious lessons, as they go. 

The clouds, the stars, the sea, the grave. 
Wide prairie wastes and crowded marts. 

All that is fair, and good, and brave, 
In peaceful homes and gen'rous hearts, 

Through thee their wond'rous meanings tell : 
And as men go to work and pray — 

Feeling thy song's persuafive spell — 
Love's face seems closer o'er their way. 

Before thee Error howled and fled ; 

And in thy path, though bold and strong, 
Oppreflion quailed. From thy hand sped 

The glittering shafts that crippled wrong. 



5i 



And thy lips swelled the stirring peal 

That roused the people to uphold 
The sacred cause of commonweal. 

O, may thy happy eyes behold 

Fair Freedom's triumph, and the sway 
Of Peace, which after strife and pain, 

Shall usher the illustrious day 
Of a great Nation born again ! 

Smooth be thy latest stages here, 

Revered, and loved, and watched by those 

To whom thou seemest still more dear. 
The further on thy journey goes. 

And keeping yet the child-like heart — 

Pure home of every sacred guest — 
At last, in perfect: peace, depart, 

O Bryant, to thy blissful rest. 

H. N. Powers. 

Davenport, Iowa, Nov., 1864. 

The Century regretted exceedingly the absence of the 
Rev. Dr. William A. Muhlenberg. To friendly responses 
in reply to their invitation he added : 

EXTRACT OF DR. WILLIAM A. MUHLENBERG's LETTER. 

" I beg of him whom you mean so juftly to honor, the accept- 
ance of my greetings on his entering his threescore and ten, while 



yet in the spring-time of his Muse — the trueft poet of Nature in 
our land, may he long live to attune his chords to the Supernatural 
as well." 

The Rev. Charles T. Brooks, who, as he said, was " with 
us at all events in the spirit," wrote : 

EXTRACT OF REV. CHARLES T. BROOKS'S LETTER. 

" Mr. Bryant has been for — fifty years fhall I say ? — one of my 
nobleft teachers in the school of beauty, wisdom, and piety ; and 
my heart and all that is within me draws me to the feftival at 
which so many fine minds and noble hearts will express for me 
my feelings of gratitude, respeil:, and veneration ! " 

EXTRACT OF A LETTER FROM REV. DR. A. CLEVELAND COXE, 
BISHOP ELECT OF THE WESTERN DIOCESE OF NEW YORK, 
TO THE CENTURY. 

" Thanking you for the honor of your invitation to attend a 
celebration of the 70th anniversary of our diftinguifhed fellow- 
citizen, Mr. Bryant, I am very sorry, as an admirer of his poetical 
genius, that other engagements will not permit of my being present 
with you on the evening of Saturday next." 

The Rev. Dr. Samuel Osgood, of the Century, being 
present, spoke as follows : 



53 



THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE ARTS. 

What sentiment is more in time and place than that of the 
"Fellowship of the Beautiful Arts"? Here are Archite6lure, 
Sculpture, Painting — those arts that depend most upon the hand, 
and appeal most to the eye ; here, too, are Mufic, Poetry, the 
Drama, Eloquence — those arts that depend mainly upon the voice, 
and appeal mainly to the ear ; here they all are in the persons of 
accomplished masters, and pledge each other in loyal brotherhood. 
Arts of the two imperial senses, the Eye and the Ear, they are the 
two doors of the Gate called Beautiful that leads into the temple 
of the Highest. The venerable chiefs of them both are here ; 
for that portrait of Bryant from the pencil of Durand brings 
the powers of the eye and ear into unison, and those garlands are 
their coronation. Let us all say, " Long Hve that union and those 
men." 

How marvellous are those two senses and the arts that appeal 
to them ! The eye and the ear, how different, yet how like ; the 
one more exterior and expanfive, the other more close and inten- 
five ; the one moving on waves of light, the other on waves of air; 
the one rejoicing in form and color, light and shade, the other in 
tone and melody, cadence and swell ; the one, perhaps, more 
material, the other more spiritual ; yet both almost like different 
funftions of the same sense and different oracles of the same law, 
matching the tints of the prismatic spe6lrum with the chords of 
the mufical scale, as if color voiced itself into song, and song shone 
forth into color. Thus one, and thus different, the eye and the 
ear are like the Eros and Psyche of old, more of Eros in the eye, 
more of Psyche in the ear, yet both one in that loving embrace 



54 

which all arts have so celebrated, both claflic and Christian, and 
which even the Christian muse has been not ashamed to call a type 
of the mystical union of body and soul in the life immortal. 

All the arts of the eye and ear greet each other here, and put 
to us who are not of their craft the queftion. What right have we 
to be here among these mafters ? Right enough ; and by right, 
not by favor, we claim our place — the right of the scholar to be 
with the mafter, the right of the devotee to be at the fhrine. We 
are all, even the humbleft of us, at home here, as scholars or lovers 
of art ; and without such companionfhip, what can artifts do, and 
who will appreciate and encourage them ? It is a great law of life 
that original genius in the mafter needs genial susceptibility in the 
disciple, as the seed needs the soil to grow in. Such geniality we 
all have, and none more so than those here present who are our 
moft modeft guefts — those fair friends of our artifts. If art has 
its kings, why not its queens ? and a queenly genius charmed us 
juft now. 

Why not say that we, too, all of us, are, or ought to be, artifts, 
and have something to do with fhaping rough material into ideal 
perfeition ? Why surrender the honors of this fellowftiip to any 
exclufive set of men ? Why not rather maintain that it is the 
work of every true life to work out a noble ideal according to the 
wisdom that is from God, by the love that seeks Him as its end, 
and in the kingdom that gathers all that is lovely to Him in blessed 
communion ? Only as we take this ftand do we honor the arts 
duly, and save our gifts from conceit, and make genius a bond of 
unity, inftead of a crazing hero-worftiip. All the arts are greater 
than our artifts, and poetry is greater than the greateft poet. Every 
man is a debtor to his calling, and the higher the calling the greater 



55 

is the debt. We are the poet's friends and admirers, not his 
adorers, and his gentle bearing and speech help us to honor high 
Art and its Divine Archetype in honoring this gifted and faithful 
servant. The true check upon adulation is responfibility j and he 
who takes his talents from the hand of the Perfect Mafter is in no 
danger of being spoiled by flattery, but rather measures dignity by 
service, and is humbler as he soars, because nearer to the Eternal 
Mind. 

I will not undertake to preach here to-night, for we are all free 
companions, unassuming good fellows, in this Century Club, with- 
out any bigots or bores, that I know of; but I am in perfedt keep- 
ing with your general temper, and the spirit of our honored gueft, 
in affirming that religion is the supreme art, and God is the Su- 
preme Defigner, flooding the fkies with glory, filling the earth with 
loveliness, calling all souls to build life according to His perfedl 
archetype, and to worftiip and enjoy Him in the beauty of holiness. 
No other than He gave this poet, our brother, his gift and miffion ; 
and God, who rounded and rolled the spheres, taught him as a child 
the sweep of his vifion and the rhythm of his verse. Seventy 
years of God's providence ftand before us in that honored form, 
and we hear their solemn footfteps with the march of this feflive 
mufic. What a seventy years — 1 794-1 864 — from the fall of 
Robespierre and French terrorism to the downfall of American 
flavery and its code of terror ; from the rise of Napoleon to the 
uprifing of this free Republic ! God grant that our poet may fing 
its grand jubilee, every fhackle broken, and every loft ftar returned ! 
What ages of invention, enterprise, and thought are concentrated 
into that space ! How mildly, yet mightily, those years are em- 
bodied and interpreted in that face, and voice, and pen ! How 



56 



much there is in that presence to bring our own changing years 
together, and to aflimilate our difFerent Hves ! Some of us had his 
verse sung to us in infancy ; almoft all of us read his " Waterfowl," 
and " Green River," and " Thanatopfis," at school. Every fair 
scene in nature is fairer by his interpretation ; the nation, liberty, 
humanity, God, are nearer and dearer to us by his ftirring odes, 
and calm, uplifting hymns. Nor let his prose writing be forgotten 
in our zeal to do honor to his verse, for he who is master of prose 
is master of all beauty ; and in this work, the poet and historian are 
one as here at our festival, in host and guest. The pen as thus 
wielded builds, paints, and carves ; fings, rhythms, ails, and pleads, 
and calls all the Muses at its spell. 

God bless our poet, and the whole fellowfliip of the beautiful 
arts ! These forty artists have brought to you in that portfolio the 
precious offerings of their gifted hands. In the name of our 
scholars and pastors, as one of their hearty brothers, I bring a leaf 
of palm to lay among your laurels in behalf of the Art Divine, 
that is second to none of the Arts, and the inspiration of all. 

The Prefident next direded attention to poets and friends 
who were absent. An earned invitation had been extended 
to Mr. John Pierpont. 

EXTRACT OF MR. PIERPONT's LETTER IN REPLY. 

At first I said within my heart, I'll go. — 
But second thoughts forbade me to engage, 
At such a time in such a pilgrimage. 



57 

My health infirm, the season, and my age, 

— (For more than half my eightieth year is spent,) — 

Admonifli me to stay at home content, 

And worihip, like the Sabian, from afar, 

Kiffing my hand towards our brightest star. 

EXTRACT FROM MR. CHARLES SPRAGUe's REPLY. 

" Your tempting request comes to me on my own birthday 
(October 26). Now and then, and only now and then, do I regret 
the infirmities of three-and-seventy years. I am senfibly reminded 
of them at the present time, for I am thereby deprived of the 
privilege of uniting in a worthy tribute to one whose fame is the 
honest pride of us all." 

As the Prefident pronounced the name of Mr. Long- 
fellow, there was a general movement, which lliowed that no 
man in the country would have received a more tender and 
hearty welcome. 

EXTRACT OF MR. HENRY W. LONGFELLOW's LETTER. 

Cambridge, Oct. 23^/, 1864. 

My DEAR Mr. Bancroft: 

I assure you nothing would give me greater pleasure than 
to do honor to Bryant, at all times and in all ways ; both as a poet 
and as a man. He has written noble verse, and led a noble life ; 
and we are all proud of him. I am glad you are to pay him the 



58 

homage of this Festival ; and fhould rejoice to take part in it, if it 
were poffible. But I am really too unwell to be present, and must, 
though with extreme relu61:ance, decline your very cordial invita- 
tion. 

I remain, dear Mr. Bancroft, 

Yours truly, 

Henry W. Longfellow. 

The Century regretted the absence of Mr. Lowell, and 
ftill more " the bitter occafion of it." Their invitation found 
him a mourner at the obsequies of his nephew, Charles 
Russell Lowell, the beft scholar among his contemporaries, 
from boyhood full of soul and of honor, faultless as friend, 
brother, son, husband, patriot, and soldier ; who, equal to any 
career, had, on the breaking out of the rebellion, given him- 
self up to his country with unselfifli love ; lithe, delicately 
framed, aftive, imperturbably self-balanced, with a quick eye 
and celerity of thought and judgment, had in rapid succes- 
fion commanded a company of cavalry, a regiment, a bri- 
gade ; had in many a field, as at Antietam, braved the hail- 
ftorm of bullets ; had in the one campaign of the Shenandoah, 
had thirteen horses fliot under him in battle ; had, on the 
nineteenth of Odober, nothing daunted by one terrible 
wound, ftill led the final glorious cavalry charge ; and had 
fallen by a second wound in the moment of consummated 



59 

vidory ; leaving a widow of twenty, himself not yet thirty ; 
beautiful in death, as in life he had been lovely. 

EXTRACT OF MR. JAMES R. LOWELl's LETTER. 

My dear Mr. Bancroft : 

I was just about to write and say how glad I fhould be to 
join in your coming festival, when the sad news came which makes 
it impoflible that I fhould do so. 

It would have been a particular gratification to me, could I 
have joined in any public expreflion of respeit for Mr. Bryant, 
who as Poet has done so much for the honor of his country, and, 
as Editor, so much for its salvation. The lesson of his charader 
and example seems to me of such lasting value that I am rejoiced 
to hear attention called to it in a manner so distinguished. 

ON BOARD THE SEVENTY-SIX. 

BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 

Our ship lay tumbling in an angry sea. 

Her rudder gone, her mainmast o'er the fide ; 

Her scuppers from the waves' clutch staggering free. 

Trailed threads of priceless crimson through the tide ;" 

Sails, shrouds, and spars with hostile cannon torn. 

We lay, awaiting morn. 

Awaiting morn, such morn as mocks despair ; 
And she that bore the promise of the wodd 



6o 



Within her fides, now hopeless, helmless, bare, 
At random o'er the wildering waters hurled. 
The reek of battle drifting slow a-lee. 
Not sullener than we. 

Morn came at last to peer into our woe. 

When lo, a sail ! now surely help is nigh. 

The red cross flames aloft, Christ's pledge, — but no. 

Her black guns grinning hate, she rushes by 

And hails us. "Gains the leak? Ah, so we thought; 

Sink, then, with curses fraught ! " 

I leaned against my gun still angry-hot. 
And my lids tingled with the tears held back ; 
This scorn methought was crueller than shot ; 
The manly death-grip in the battle-wrack. 
Yard-arm to yard-arm, were more friendly far 
Than such fear-smothered war. 

Some, faintly loyal, felt their pulses lag 
With the slow beat that doubts and then despairs ; 
Some, caitiff^, would have struck the starry flag 
That knits us with our past, and makes us heirs 
Of deeds high-hearted as were ever done 
'Neath the all-seeins; sun. 

But one there was, the Singer of our crew. 
Upon whose head Age waved his peaceful fign. 
But whose red heart's-blood no surrender knew ; 
And couchant under brows of maflive line. 



6i 



The eyes, like guns beneath a parapet, 
Watched charged with Hghtnings yet. 

The voices of the hills did his obey ; 

The torrents flashed and tumbled in his song ; 

He brought our native fields from far away. 

Or set us mid the innumerable throng 

Of dateless woods, or where we heard the calm 

Old homestead's evening psalm. 

But now he sang of faith to things unseen, 
Of freedom's birthright given to us in trust, 
And words of doughty cheer he spoke between. 
That made all earthly fortune seem .as dust. 
Matched with that duty, old as time and new. 
Of being brave and true. 

We, listening, learned what makes the might of words,- 
Manhood to back them, constant as a star ; 
His voice rammed home our cannon, edged our swords. 
And sent our boarders shouting ; shroud and spar 
Heard him and stiffened ; the sails heard and wooed 
The winds with loftier mood. 

In our dark hour he manned our guns again ; 
Remanned ourselves from his own manhood's store; 
Pride, honor, country, throbbed through all his strain ; 
And shall we praise ? God's praise was his before ; 
And on our futile laurels he looks down. 
Himself our bravest crown. 



62 



Public duty detained Mr. Whittier at home ; but he 
did not fail to send what he called " a rough draft of some 
verses," which seemed to others exquifitely iinillied. 

BRYANT. 

BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 

I praise not here the poet's art, 

The rounded fitness of his song ; 
Who weighs him from his life apart 

Must do his nobler nature wrong. 

Not for the eye familiar grown 

With beauty elsewhere undescried, — 

The marvellous gift he shares alone 
With him who walked on Rydal fide ; 

Not for rapt hymn nor woodland lay 

Too grave for smiles, too sweet for tears, 

We speak his praise who wears to-day 
The glory of his seventy years ! 

When Freedom hath her own again 

Let happy lips his songs rehearse : 
His life is now his noblest strain. 

His manhood better than his verse. 

Thank God ! his hand on Nature's keys 
Its cunning keeps at life's full span ; 



63 

But dimmed and dwarfed, in times like these, 
The Poet seems befide the Man ! 

So be it ! — Let the garlands die ! 

Fade civic wreath and finger's meed ! — 
Let our names perish if thereby 

Our country may be saved and freed ! 

A letter was then read from one, who, had he been 
present, would have found himself environed by friends, and 
the objed of universal resped. His words were as follows : 

Boston, zpA October, 1864. 

My dear Mr. Bancroft : 

I deeply regret that I cannot be with you on the evening 
of the 5th, to join you in doing honor to the Neftor of our Ameri- 
can poets. The Neftor of our poets, I may call him, for more 
than one reason, for of his poetry it may be truly said, as of the 
speech of the Homeric Veteran, 

Tow Kol and y\(dccriq fielirog y2,vKc6v peev avdfj. 

Having myself touched the goal of threescore years and ten, 
but a few months earlier than Mr. Bryant, I can, better than some 
of you youngfters, enter into the sentiment of the tribute which 
you are paying to him. 

I have through life been a great lover of Mr. Bryant's poetry. 
My admiration of it began in early youth, with his firft produdions, 
and is one of the juvenile taftes, which after years and severer 
habits of thought have confirmed and ftrengthened. 



64 

I particularly enjoy Mr. Bryant's poetry, because I can under- 
ftand it. It is probably a fign that I am somewhat behind the age, 
that I have but little relifh for elaborate obscurity in literature, of 
which you find it difficult to ftudy out the meaning, and are not 
sure that you have hit upon it, at laft. This is too much the 
character of the moll popular poetry of the modern Enghfh school. 

On the contrary, our noble poetical trio, Bryant, Longfellow, 
and Whittier, are always eafily intelligible. They touch the fineft 
chords of tafte and feeling, but they never ftrain at efFe6t. This, 
it seems to me, is the higheft merit, in every department of litera- 
ture, and in poetry it is well called Inspiration. Surprise, conceit, 
ftrange combinations of imagery and expreffion, may be success- 
fully managed, but it is merit of an inferior kind. The truly 
beautiful, pathetic, and sublime, is always fimple and natural, and 
marked by a certain serene unconsciousness of effort. This is the 
chara6ler of Mr. Bryant's poetry. 

I congratulate the Century Club on the opportunity of paying 
this richly earned tribute of respe6t and affediion to their veteran, 
and him on the well-deserved honor. 

The taste, the culture, and the patriotism of the country are, 
on this occafion, in full sympathy alike with those who weave and 
with him who wears the laurel wreath. 

Happy the community that has the discernment to appreciate 
its gifted sons, — happy the poet, the artist, the scholar, who is per- 
mitted to enjoy, in this way, a foretaste of posthumous commemora- 
tion and fame ! 

I remain, my dear Mr. Bancroft, with fincere affection, ever 
truly yours, 

Edward Everett. 



6^ 

It was now recalled to mind that Mr. Bryant had been 
bred to the law. The Century hoped at this time to hear 
the voice of their venerable ex-Preiident, who had so long 
and so efficiently taken the chief part in the condud of their 
affairs. They heard with sorrow that he was detained from 
his old friends by his grandson, who was suffering from very 
severe wounds, received in defence of his country. 



Saturday, ^tA November, 1864. 

Hon. George Bancroft, 

Preftdent of The Century: 

I regret that I must decline the kind invitation of the Prefi- 
dent and Committee of management to be present at the meeting 
of the Century this evening to congratulate their most distinguilhed 
member on his Seventieth birthday. 

Peculiar circumstances put it out of my power to be personally 
present, but I cordially join in the warm praises and wifhes which 
will be expressed to-night by many eminent men and felt by all. 

The present kindly and genial autumn, " so mercifully dealing 
with the growths of summer," resembles so much Bryant's own 
advancing age, that I cannot but use his own fimply beautiful 
words to express to him the feelings and wishes of a friendship of 
many years : 

" Like the kindly season may Ufe's decline come o'er him ; 
Paft is manhood's summer, the frofty months are here, 
Yet be genial airs and a pleasant sunlhine left him, — 
Leaf, and fruit, and blossom, to deck the clofing year." 
9 



66 



With my best regards to my fellow members and their guest 
of the evening, 

I remain yours, 

G. C. Verplanck. 

After reading this letter, the Prefident introduced the 
Attorney of the United States for the Diftrid of Massachu- 
setts. 

SPEECH OF RICHARD H. DANA, JR. 

Mr. President : 

While I thank you and the gentlemen of the Century Club 
for the privilege of taking part in this moft interefting commemora- 
tion, I feel that it is rather in a representative capacity than from 
any personal claims, that I am here. Mr. Bryant has kindly 
named firft in his enumeration of his friends not with us to-night, 
one whose name it is my fortune to bear in another generation. I 
assure Mr. Bryant that there is no one among his almoft countless 
friends, present or absent, whose thoughts gather more fondly 
about the associations which this day revives. 

It is now nearly fifty years fmce my father and his kinsman. 
Professor Channing, editing the North American Review, received 
a manuscript poem, from an anonymous author, offered for publica- 
tion in that journal. They read it again and again. It could not 
be said to give promise, to hold out indications, of powers to be 
developed by time. It was the matured, finifhed work of one 
already a mafter. We had then no such man in America. They 
naturally suspedled that it might be the work of one of the mature 



67 

poets of the firft rank across the water, or poflibly a tranflation 
from one of the mafter minds on the continent unfamihar to them. 
They gave it a place in their columns. At once, it commanded 
its own place in the permanent literature of the Englifli tongue. 
Its title was " Thanatopfis " ! 

But who was the author ? They found it was the firft con- 
fiderable effort of a youth, fince grown to full manhood, who had 
never been beyond the hills of Western Massachusetts. Having 
been a scholar in the college at Williamstown, he had studied law, 
and had just been admitted to the Bar in the rural county of Berk- 
ftiire. An acquaintance began, which ripened into a friendfhip of 
nearly half a century, and which I have a double reason for hoping 
the Great Separator may spare for many years to come. 

No poet, Sir, can hope for permanence to his fame unless he 
connects himself with something permanent in human nature. 
Mr. Bryant has always been true to Nature and to Freedom. A 
hard neceffity called him from the banks of the river he had made 
immortal, from the flowers, the fields, the breezes, the birds, the 
trees, the fkies, he loved as his life, to the hard pavements of your 
great city, — to the unpitying stones of Wall Street. There, in the 
dingy editorial closet, amid the life-consuming sounds of the pub- 
lifhing house of a daily commercial and political journal, he was 
cheerful, hopeful, and loyal. Never did he pervert his sacred trust 
of divine poetry to the service of fafhion, or trade, or party. True 
to nature, nature was true to him. Outfide the city in which he 
sat a captive, earth, sea, and fky were full of his unsubfidized allies. 
The air breathed, blue ocean sparkled, the leaves shook, the birds 
of the air sang comfort and ftrength to his brave, patient spirit. 
And now he is spared to see Freedom rifing again to power and 



68 



dignity throughout the land, and Slavery, like his own immortal 
impersonation of Error, dying amidst its worshippers. 

Yes, Sir, so long as there shall be found a true love of fimple 
nature, the Green River, the Water Fowl, the Evening Wind, the 
Death of the Flowers, will be cherished. Wherever there is a 
soul capable of noble seriousness, the Thanatopfis and the Lines 
to the Past will be remembered. And wherever, in any clime or 
age, there is one man struggling for Truth and Freedom, his faint- 
ing spirit shall be revived by those words, which, hackneyed though 
they be, time cannot wither nor custom stale : — " Truth crushed 
to earth shall rise again." 

The theme was continued by a member of the Century. 

speech of william m. evarts. 

Mr. President, Ladies, and Gentlemen : 

I do not know what right I have to speak, or what claim 
to be heard, on this occafion of our festive homage to the, genius 
and renown of Mr. Bryant, unless fimply as a member of the 
community upon whom, by his refidence among them, he has shed 
so much lustre. 

Yet, Sir, it is very fit that the public and learned profeflions 
should join with the poets, and scholars, and artists, who have 
shown themselves with so noble and brilliant a presence here to- 
night, in this graceful and truthful testimony that the poet, more 
fortunate than the prophet to whom, in some sort, he has suc- 
ceeded, is not without honor in his own country. For*what preacher 



69 

is there among us but will readily admit that, in the larger phrase 
and fun6lion of teacher^ Mr. Bryant, in his poems and in the daily 
instru61:ions of his press, has been a faithful and constant help and 
support to the sacred office in every lesson of worthy life and of 
personal and social duty. And what lawyer will gainsay that in 
his noblest name of Advocate^ the friend whom we honor to-night, 
has been by his fide, battling for truth and justice and common 
right in every generous cause in the wide forum of public opinion, 
that tribunal of last resort in a free and enlightened country. 

Much has been said, Sir, of Mr. Bryant's love of nature and 
of his love of art, and they have been infisted upon, with much 
force and beauty, as principal traits of his chara6ler and of his 
poems. So far, if we may trust Mr. Emerson's vivid portraiture, 
did the paffionate love of nature carry Mr. Bryant, that we owe to 
his great example a practice which has grown to be an omnipresent 
source of displeasure and annoyance to the enthufiasts who traverse 
our wide country in search of the pi6luresque, to find in every nook 
and corner the emblazoned names and fame of every quack and 
mountebank of high or low degree ! For Mr. Emerson tells us, 
Mr. Bryant was the first to write his name upon the rocks and the 
mountains, and by the fide of the rivers and the waterfalls, thus 
spreading his renown and drawing tribute from all nature. Alas ! 
to what base perverfions may not a bright example come. 

But, Mr. Prefident, on Mr. Bryant's love of art I have some- 
thing more, and something more serious to say — Mr. Bryant was 
driven to be a poet by no neceffity. He has no such excuse. He 
was bred and trained to an honorable, useful, and unselfish profes- 
fion. I mean, of course, the profeffion of the law, for I may 
safely appeal to the candid judgment, I will not say of this audience 



. 70 

fimply, but of the public at large, to bear me out in saying that, 
if there be any calling or employment whose followers exhibit in 
their whole lives, in their daily walk and conversation, a uniform 
tenor of disinterested, uncalculating, self-denying, self-sacrificing 
devotion to the good of others, without the remotest notion of fee 
or reward to themselves, it is the profeffion of the law. Now, 
Sir, what might not Mr. Bryant have done for the world, with his 
preeminent and enthufiastic love of Jrt^ had he faithfully adhered 
to the profeffion of the law, instead of waywardly seeking his own 
sweet will with the muses ? Where and how could his love of 
Art human, profuse and exuberant, have flowed out into more 
various or wider channels of pra6lica1 influence, than in the ample 
scope for invention, illufion, false coloring, and deception, offered 
n a prosperous career in the law ? We are told, indeed, that as 
it was, he aided in founding a new academy of Defign. Pretty 
successfully, too, Mr. Prefident, if we may judge of the proficiency 
of the academicians by the exhibition we have had from them here 
to-night. Certainly it is a chef-d'oeuvre of defign worthy of a 
whole academy, to charm your guest, and this company, into an 
admiration of the varied beauty and splendor of the numerous 
pictures which, at so costly toil of genius, they had made into a 
gift for this occafion, and yet, all that our eyes have seen is a 
leathern portfolio, closely locked, and for the rest, we have heard 
an artistic story that the key is accidentally lost, and an ingenuous 
regret that the fketches are unfinijhedl This is very well in a 
small way. But, think of Mr. Bryant, in his love of art, as the 
founder of a new school of defign, in the profeffion of the law ; a 
new school of scheme, contrivance, and chicanery ; of surprise, 
fimulation, and subterfuge ! Who will begrudge a tear for this 



71' 

glory lost to Mr. Bryant, to the profeflion, and to the world, when 
he was seduced from his early love of the law ? 

Mr. Prefident, our profeflion has now borne, for more than a 
century, the reproach of having stolen from Apollo one of his 
golden-haired children and changed him into a dusty-wigged priest 
of Themis ; — Pope's lament, 

" How sweet an Ovid was in Murray loft," 

commemorates the wrong. Thank Heaven I that account at last 
is settled. If we took from the muses young Murray, and made 
him the Chief Justice of England, they have robbed us of the 
youthful Bryant and made him the Chief Poet of America. 

How keen a lawyer was in Bryant loft. 

The last place was reserved for the offerings of old and 
new friends of Mr. Bryant, poets now or formerly of New 
York and its vicinity. 

LETTER OF FITZ-GREENE HALLECK. 

Guilford, Conn., Nov. ^th, 1864. 

My dear Sir : 

I am very grateful indeed for your kind invitation, and have 
most ardently hoped for the pleasure of being with you at the 
Coronation of our Patriarch friend, but I am deeply grieved to say 
that for a week past I have been quite ill, and find myself to-day, 
not only disabled from journeying, but from leaving my room, to 
my exceeding regret and disappointment. 



72 

I must therefore rely upon your courtesy to present my sad 
excuse to your Prefident and Secretary for the non-performance of 
my promise, and to assure Mr. Bryant that, although far off in 
body, I shall be this evening near him in spirit, repeating the 
homage which with heart, and voice, and pen, I have during more 
than forty years of his "threescore and ten" been delighted to pay 
him. 

Believe me, my dear fir. 

Faithfully yours, 

Fitz-Greene Halleck. 

A. M. CozzENS, Esq_. 



LETTER OF N. P. WILLIS. 

Idlewild, November 3, 1864. 

To Hon. George Bancroft, 

Prefident of The Century. 
Dear Sir : — I am in receipt of your very kind and compli- 
mentary invitation to be present at the celebration of the Birthday 
of Mr. Bryant by The Century. 

I need not say to you with what unmingled satisfa6lion I accept 
the proposed honor — promifing myself the happiness of being a 
looker-on at so unusual and gratifying a spedlacle. 

Being at present a sufferer from a diphtheria^ by which I am 
deprived of the voice I might need to express a certain gratification 
I have, in connexion with Mr. Bryant, I will venture so far as to 
express this on paper — my filence, whether it be, or be not, allotted 
to me by the fefl:ivities of the evening, running the rilk of being a 
reftraint to my enthufiasm. 



73 



On coming to the city, after graduation from college in 1827, 
and adopting a profeflion of which William Cullen Bryant 
was already the moft fkilful and admired praftitioner, I unhefitat- 
ingly gave in my fealty to his preeminence — acknowledging both 
his genius as an occafional poet, and his fkill and fterling value as 
a writer of prose upon leading topics. On both of these precentor- 
fhips, he has ever fince retained his hold — lighting his occafional 
fire of inspiration on the high and holy altar of poesy, and toiling 
faithfully and perseveringly at his more regular anvils, criticism, 
morals, and politics. During all this third of a century, I have 
been, as it were, a Bryant-disciple^ committing moft of his poems 
to heart with afFeilionate admiration, and copying his "leaders" 
often, into my own journal, with laudatory adhefion and corrobora- 
tion. To be invited now, as a veteran brother editor and poet, to 
celebrate the coming round of Bryant's seventieth birthday — thirty- 
seven years after my firji acknowledgment of his pre-eminence — is a 
very great pleasure to me, my unembarrassed pen and ink muft be 
permitted to say ! 

And, may I be permitted also to specify, a little more diftin6lly, 
my homage to Mr. Bryant? 

His present eminence among all parties, as the unqueftioned 
firft poet of the country, has been gained, by him, in conne6lion 
with a career which has its daily trials and temptations — a career 
which no one but an experienced editor of a newspaper would be 
likely fully to appreciate. Let me call the attention of the brother 
poets who are to celebrate his birthday, to the undiinmed luflre of 
the laurels worn so long. If gardener or farmer, mere scholar or 
mere tradesman, were to set himself the tafk of writing " Thana- 

topfis," or "The Life that Is," or "The Cloud upon the Way"— 

10 



74 



any or all of his earlier or his Thirty Poems — how uninterruptedly 
(if firft inspired) might it all be done ! But for the daily Editor, 
the Critic, the Influencer of Public Morals, of Public Mercantile 
Interefts and of Public Politics — for him to have thus set himself 
the tafk, and come from it as does Bryant — the acknowledged moft 
independently reliable Editor, as well as the moft irreproachable 
firft poet — is an example not given us by the ancients. Let us 
allow that we are, in many ways, an improvement on the "bards" 
of old time. They, proverbially, in their latter days, became the 
victims of neglect, reproaching the world, and particularly their 
brother bards, for cruel depreciation and forgetfulness. In his laft 
new volume ("Thirty Poems ") Bryant gives us the solving of this 
riddle. He says thus to "The Poet": — 

Thou, who wouldft wear the name 

Of poet 'mid thy brethren of mankind, 
And clothe in words of flame 

Thoughts that fliall live within the general mind, 
Deem not the framing of a deathless lay 
The pafHme of a drowsy summer-day. 

But gather all thy powers. 

And wreak them on the verse that thou doft weave. 
And in thy lonely hours, 

At filent morning or at wakeful eve, 
While the warm current tingles thro' thy veins, 
Set forth the burning words in fluent ftrains. 
***** 

The secret wouldft thou know 

To touch the heart or fire the blood at will ? 
Let thine own eyes o'erflow ; 

Let thy lips quiver with the paflionate thrill j 



75 



Seize the great thought, ere yet its power be paft, 
And bind, in words, the fleet emotion faft. 
***** 
So fhalt thou frame a lay- 
That haply may endure from age to age, 
And they who read fliall say : 

What witchery hangs upon this poet's page ! 
What art is his the written spells to find 
That sway from mood to mood the willing mind. 
***** 

It is thus that he has himself aited " The Poet," and it is in 
this guise, and with the coronet bellowed by his contemporaries, 
that we commit him to Pofterity. 

Hoping to avail myself of your kindness, and be at leaft a 
looker-on at this moft novel and interesting ceremony, I remain. 

Dear Mr. Bancroft, 

Yours most faithfully, 

N. P. Willis. 

BRYANT. 

BY E. A. STANSBURY. 

" Show US a Bard," the old world cried. 
With look of scorn and tone defiant ; 

Columbia turned with queenly pride 
And pointed to the name of Bryant. 

"Show us a Man, with steadfast soul. 
On God and Right and Truth reliant, 

Unbent though tempests fhake the pole ;" 
Again the name fhe gave was Bryant. 



76 



Ah ! blest, thus great and true to be, 
Yet still with heart unchilled and pliant, 

My Country ! saved, restored, and free. 
Thy purest name Ihall still be Bryant. 

November, 1864. 



Mr. Street, of Albany, recited with great earneftness the 
following lines : 

POEM. 

BY ALFRED B. STREET. 

A fadeless wreath is thine 
Oh poet of our love ! its radiant twine 

Not from the Old World's flowers. 
But the unchanging foliage of the pine ; — 
Tree of our land that, century-cin6lured, towers, 
Foot on the rock and forehead in the (ky ; 
Yet its deep bosom thrilling with a figh 
Although its boughs be glossed in golden dye j — 

Emblem of thy true lyre 
Sounding in solemn wail and bright in joyous fire ! 

The old oak, ivy-tressed. 
Whose acorn rung on Arthur's warrior-crest 

Along his knightly way. 
No minstrel fervor kindles in thy breast. 



77 

But the wild hemlock, where the hunter lay 
By his lone watch-fire, whence the startled flight 
Of the young eagle that, with shrinkless fight. 
Still dares the sun-flash, swings his soaring height 

Within thy native strain, 
And, frowning in his shade, the red man's flitting train. 

Thy full-orbed genius sought 
The blended realm of Nature and of Thought. 

Heart watched befide the eye ; 
The spirit colored what the vifion caught ; 
The warm life mingled with the earth and fky ; 
Boughs waved with mufings ; contemplation breathed 
From flowers ; and Song's bright brow was never wreathed 
With more befitting gifts than thine, bequeathed 

To Time, its lofty plan 
So true that genius wrought to nature and to man. 

And Nature lives in thee ! 
The soul-expanding dome — its twin, the sea — 

Peaks, pillars of the cloud — 
The cataraft's crash — the thunder's roll — the free. 
Grand winds — the stately sweep of woods — the crowd 
Of bird, tree, flower ; and, in her essence glassed. 
Nature with grateful love shall hold thee fast. 
As holds the gem its hues, while years shall last ; — 

And every age shall praise. 
For Nature every breast in close communion sways. 



78 



Each loved theme fings and shines 
In Memory's heart ; — its fields Green River twines ; 

Dread Thanatopfis chants ; 
The Ages speak ; soar the cragged Apennines j 
Red floats the Waterfowl to sunset haunts ; 
Flashes the fiery charge of Marion's Men ; 
The unshorn Fields roll billowy from the ken ; 
The murdered Traveller moulders in his glen ; 

Monument Mountain towers ; 
And cold November blights the gentle race of Flowers. 

Thy matin-strain arose 
When native song scarce breathed ; while now it flows, 

Sounding on every fide, 
Still in our hearts thy golden mufic glows. 
Our mighty land looks on thy wreath with pride ; 
The future's plaudits echo in thine ear ; 
Thy statue greets thee still in thy career ; 
Thy star breaks, blazing, in life's sunset clear ; 

Fame steps in front of death 
In token of thy tones immortal in her breath. 

Day sheds its parting sheen ; 
The heavenward rays stream softly o'er the scene ; 

Birds twitter into fleep ; 
The loitering kine pace home through darkening green ; 
Along the trees, faint flumberous breathings creep; 
Far, dreamy sounds flit, melting on the air 



79 



That eastward thickens, while in hues more fair 

The west burns down ; bowed Nature, wrapt in prayer. 

And robed in deepening light, 
Hushes her peaceful heart to hail the hovering night. 

Mr. Stoddard's ftanzas were read by Mr. Bayard Taylor. 



VATES PATRIyE. 

November 30, 1794 — November 30, 1864. 

There came a Woman in the night. 

When winds were whist, and moonlight smiled. 
Where, in his mother's arms who flept. 
There lay a new-born child. 

She gazed at him with loving looks, 
And while her hand upon his head 
She laid, in blefling and in power, 

In flow, deep words fhe said : 

"This child is mine. Of all my sons 
Are none like what the lad Ihall be, — 
Though these are wise, and those are strong. 
And all are dear to me. 

" Beyond their arts of peace and war 
The gift that unto him belongs, — 
To see my face, to read my thoughts. 
To learn my filent songs. 



8o 



"The elder fisters of my race 

Shall taunt no more that I am dumb ; 
Hereafter I fhall fing through him, 
In ages yet to come ! " 

She stooped, and kissed his baby mouth. 

Whence came a breath of melody. 
As from the closed leaves of a rose 
The murmur of a bee ! 

Thus did fhe consecrate the child. 

His more than mother from that hour. 
Albeit at first he knew her not, 

Nor guessed his fleeping power. 

But not the less fhe hovered near. 

And touched his spirit unawares ; 
Burned in the red of morning Ikies, 
And breathed in evening airs. 

Unfelt in his, her guiding hand 

Withdrew him from the haunts of men, 
To where her secret bowers were built 
In wood, and grove, and glen. 

Sometimes he caught a tranfient glimpse 
Of her broad robe, that swept before ; 
Deep in the heart of ancient woods. 
Or by the sounding fliore. 



8i 



One prosperous day he chanced to see 

(Be sure 'twas in a lonely place) 
Her glance of pride, that sought his own — 
At last her noble face ! 

Not as it fronts her children now, 

With clouded brows, and looks of ire, 
And eyes that would be blind with tears, 
But for their quenchless fire ! 

But happy, gracious, beautiful. 

And more imperial than a Queen ; 
A woman of majestic mould. 

And most maternal mien. 

And he was happy. For in her 

("For he," fhe said, "fhall read my mind,") 
He saw the glory of the earth. 

The hope of hurrtankind. 

Thenceforth, wherever he might walk, 
Through forest aisles, or by the sea ; 
Where floats the flower-like butterfly, 
And hums the drowsy bee j 

By rock-ribbed hills, and penfive vales 

That stretch in fliade between ; 

And by the soft-complaining brooks 

That make the meadows green j 
11 



■82 

He felt her presence everywhere, 

To-day was glad, to-morrow grave ; 
And what she gave to him in thought, 
To us in song he gave. 

In stately songs, in solemn hymns, 

(Few are so clear, and none so high,) 
That mirrored her, in calm and storm, 
As mountain lakes the Iky. 

And evermore one Shape appeared. 

To comfort now, and now command j 
A bearded man, with many scars. 
Who bore a battle-brand ! 

And she was filled with serious joy, 
To know her poet followed him ; 
Not lofing heart, nor bating hope. 
When others' faith was dim. 

And, as the years went flowly by. 

And she grew stronger, and more wise, 
Stretching her hands o'er broader lands. 
And grander destinies : 

And he, our poet, poured his hymns. 

Serene, prophetic, sad, — as each 
Became a part of her renown. 

And of his native speech ; 



83 

She wove, by turns, a wreath for him, — 

The bufiness of her idle hours ; 
And here were sprigs of mountain pine. 
And there were prairie flowers. 

And now, even in her sorest need. 

Pale, bleeding, faint in every limb, — 
She still remembers what he is, 
And comes to honor him. 

For hers, not ours, the songs we bring, — 
The flowers, the mufic, and the light ; 
And 'tis her hand that lays the wreath 
On his gray head to-night ! 

R. H. Stoddard. 

November 3d, 1864. 

One more poem graced the evening ; the tribute of a 
long and intimate friendftiip. 

TO WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT— ON HIS 
SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY. 

BY H. T. TUCKERMAN. 

Calm priest of Nature, her maternal hand 

Led thee, a reverent child, 
To mountain-altars, by the lonely strand. 

And through the forest wild. 



84 



Haunting her temple, filled with love and awe, 

To thy responfive youth 
The harmonies of her benignant law 

Revealed consoling truth. 

Thenceforth, when toiling in the grasp of Care 

Amid the eager throng, 
A votive seer, her greetings thou didst bear. 

Her oracles prolong. 

The vagrant winds and the far heaving main 

Breathed in thy chastened rhyme. 
Their latent mufic to the soul again. 

Above the din of time. 

The seasons, at thy call, renewed the spell 

That thrilled our better years. 
The primal wonder o'er our spirits fell. 

And woke the fount of tears. 

And Faith's monition, like an organ's strain, 

Followed the sea-bird's flight. 
The river's bounteous flow, the ripening grain. 

And stars' unfathomed light. 

In the dank woods and where the meadows gleam. 

The lowliest flower that smiled 
To wisdom's vigil or to fancy's dream, 

Thy gentle thought beguiled. 



r 



85 



They win fond glances in the prairies sweep, 

And where the moss-clumps lie, 
A welcome find when through the mould they creep, 

A requiem when they die. 

Unstained thy song with paflions fitful hues 

Or pleasure's reckless breath, 
For nature's beauty to thy virgin muse 

Was solemnized by death. 

O'er life's majestic realm and dread repose. 

Entranced with holy calm. 
From the rapt soul of boyhood then uprose 

The memorable psalm. 

And roaming lone beneath the woodland shades. 

Thy meditative prayer 
In the umbrageous aisles and choral glades 

We murmur unaware ; 

Or track the ages with prophetic cheer, 

Lured by thy chant sublime. 
Till bigotry and kingcraft disappear 

In Freedom's chosen clime, — 

While on her ramparts with intrepid mien. 

O'er faction's angry sea. 
Thy voice proclaims, undaunted and serene. 

The watchwords of the free. 



86 



Not in vague tones or tricks of verbal art 

The pliant paean rung j 
Thine the clear utterance of an earnest heart, 

The limpid Saxon tongue. 

Our country's minstrel ! in whose crystal verse 

With tranquil joy we trace 
Her native glories, and the tale rehearse 

Of her primeval race, — 

Blest are thy laurels, that unchallenged crown 

Worn brow and filver hair. 
For truth and manhood consecrate renown, 

And her pure triumph share ! 



It being now near twelve o'clock, the Prefident announced 
that an artift member of the Century had received a com- 
miflion from a brother member, to make a colossal buft of 
Mr. Bryant, to be placed in the Central Park of New York 
City ; and thereupon the meeting was dissolved. 



87 

appenIdix. 

The names of J. G. Brown, John Rogers, and Thomas 
P. RossiTER are to be added to the lift of the artift members, 
who presented (ketches to Mr. Bryant. The copy of the 
following impromptu sonnet by a lady of New York City, 
was received by the Committee on Publication too late for 
insertion in its appropriate place. 

AT THE CENTURY. 

November ^th^ 1864. 

BY MARY ELIZABETH WILSON SHERWOOD. 

Bryant and Bancroft ! well assorted pair ! 
Beneath the Laurel and the fragrant Pine 
Your country's lovers saw you ftanding there, 
At once a memory, a hope, a fign. 
The ftirring mufic of the Poet's lyre 
And the Hiftorian's clear resounding line 
The nation's heart with courage ftiall inspire. 
And its crude gold to purer form refine.' 
The hour was dark, yet as with cheerful face 
We honored him, the Poet, Patriot true. 
Unwonted gladness seemed to fill the place ; 
Nor can our hopes refuse to spring anew. 
While Bryant's verse leads on our men to glory. 
And Bancroft's pen illuminates their ftory. 



88 



COMMITTEE OF T^IE CENTURT FOR THE 
BRYANT FESTIVAL. 

George Bancroft, Prefident. William J. Hoppin, 

A. R. Macdonough, Secretary. Louis Lang, 

John Priestley, Treasurer. John H. Gourlie, 

Lewis M. Rutherford, William Kemble, 
Thomas Hicks, Trustees. 

PRESENTERS OF THE PORTFOLIO AND 
CARVED STAND. 

William T. Blodgett, Jas. Lorimer Graham, Jr., 

A. M. CozzENS, M. K. Kitchen, 

C. E. Detmold, M. Knoedler, 

John H. Gourlie, H. Q: Marquand, 

Levi P. Morton. 

HOUSE COMMITTEE. 

Marshall Pepoon, Andrew G. Bininger, 
James C. Carter. 

COMMITTEE ON PUBLICATION. 

J. Lorimer Graham, Jr., John H. Gourlie, 
William H. Appleton. 



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